Gadgetory

hello and welcome to day two of the glorious techno mania fest we like to call CES 2018 we're coming to you live from our scene at stage in the South Pole the Las Vegas Convention Center I'm Bridget Carey and naturally I'm joined by Roger Chang and Ben Fox Ruben for another super sized edition of our news wrap-up podcast the 3:59 but you know we can't do a show that's three minutes and 59 seconds when we're at CES this is the biggest tech show in the world we're in Vegas you got to go big in Vegas this is like five podcasts into one right and there's lots of news and trends we've been covering but first we got to talk about the Buddy Roger you brought up he's got a little guest yeah this is by the way shout out the string joy for actually bring up this idea on Twitter but he suggested that I go and get the LG Chloe and we have Chloe the the home robot had a bit of a case of stage fright at the LG press conference didn't really respond so this is a moment of redemption Chloe okay so anyone doesn't know Chloe okay every you know big tech company seems to have their own little name for their assistant and it's like LG's name is Chloe and that this is just one of the many forms Chloe can take right yeah well I mean this in particular is supposed to be more of a friendly almost companion type almost an upgraded version of an echo show right this it talks it has these friendly eyes it looks adorable and it's supposed to be more of come a companion a friendlier version of access a robot yeah you would have it like plugged in on a countertop right yeah and the idea is it swivels around so we're actually gonna try giving some commands it yeah a couple of caveats there are some folks with LG here kind of helping with it this is a demo model it may not respond to all the commands but we're really hoping it does so I'm gonna this is an early prototype this is an early prototype so we're gonna give a shot is he or she I like the she four can be here sheets whatever you want okay hi Chloe I'm Roger name is Chloe I'm a homeless system robot Chloe what's for dinner Chloe what's for dinner clearly nothing because I need to lose weight and I shouldn't probably be eating dinner anyway all right Chloe what's my schedule for today Chloe fell asleep that's okay that's okay that's fine she did say hi she did respond but there you go this is again sort of an example there's a power issue but anyways well look it's it did work for a little bit and like again it's sort of an example of a different kind of design for I guess this is essentially what a smart speaker does yeah you ask questions but I think that like this Chloe in action too at the Prescott and again this is meant as almost a central hub for your smart home you know LG envisions that you buy LG smart refrigerators and televisions and ovens and the idea is you can interact with all those other devices through Chloe so it's like instead of having Alexa you're just like asking Chloe things exact way sort of having a big speech you're asking Chloe so you know like I said I asked what's for dinner Chloe could look in the refrigerator and kind of know and theoretically through the cameras in the fridge I mean I have one of the likes exactly you could ask for recipes based off of food that you have in frigerator will be able to spit out that information like a smart assistants personality a little bit further you know like I talked to a lot of people to talk about how they like Alexis personality they like talking to Alexa even though Alexa is not CEO speakers are not as adorable as great so it's a but but this I would probably describe more as like a robot as opposed to like a smart speaker so know he kind of moves and swivels a little bit at the base right well yeah so Chloe can't actually move around but you can swivel and so the animations that makes it seem a little bit more approachable you know when I talked to other chief technology officer they talked about customizing versions of Chloe for kids or for senior citizens and really it really is almost a companion piece I see this trend kind of starting to pick up I mean we as a couple other like startup companies are having that companion for your countertop you could talk to you with some cute eyes but it's it's it's just the early stages I mean nothing to me beats the cuteness of having a little robot friend and I know Sony's got their little like robot friend dog but that's not at the level of being a smart assistant yet right but I mean I mean are we entering the world of having all these little tiny buddies I mean here's a video of AIBO Oh I mean right now it's just barking but I mean it I mean is there gonna be a day where like now it's gonna compete with all the other smart assistants and there's I mean like this was such a smart move by Sony by the way there's been like this huge nostalgia trend going on in technology right now and to bring back this like smart robot or whatever the the little dog I thought was like a really smart move so although although all these little assistant buddies do cost a pretty penny like I know is like $700 if when ever it comes to the US because right now it's like oh yeah I could definitely see my picture my kid playing but and and and I would hope that the other sisters aren't that expensive but I don't know I don't know I mean to afford these things I think we need some Kodak coin have you heard about this Oh Kodak coin yes this Kodak code so this week this thing called Kodak coin absolutely exploded Kodak stock Kodak which emerged from bankruptcy I think in 2013 decided yesterday that they were gonna start getting into a cryptocurrency kind of like it's good enough for rappers it's good enough for Kodak yeah so what they did was they created cryptocurrency that's supposed to operate in image rights management system called Kodak one and it is operated by something called Kodak coin and there's so much Bitcoin mania going on these dates are the point is like you would use Kodak coins to buy the rights to use images yes yeah and it's supposed to make it a lot easier or photographers or other folks that actually have images as opposed to seeing actual money if you're asking me to explain why people are so crazy and then there's there's a Bitcoin mining rig that they're renting out if so it's separate from the Kodak coin it's like if you want to actually earn Bitcoin you can get the Kodak mining rig and rent that out and say if you can calculate it you'll make money off of it people are now discussing that whole yeah and the thing is is that I don't even think Kodak one is up and running but just the concept that they were getting into this blockchain thing they were doing a cryptocurrency sent their stock rising 120 percent in one day oh my so I guess it's a type of situation where it's buyer beware because this has been happening with fury on Bitcoin Ripple like all of these different companies okay so if your company is like old school you know and you want to be relevant again just like in Bitcoin big ya invent a crypto question should we do it we should do it on the show we should do is we should just start one right now absolutely 3:59 coins and we'll create a virtual Zoey something weird about CES and it's only it's only day two and we're already at cryptocurrency but you saw some weird stuff yesterday sugar I think after the big press release day yeah that's when the weird starts coming out oh yeah and you were saying that you saw some really weird stuff at at a booth yes so I was I was out in Tech West yesterday coming back from another meeting and Weber does know what tech West is Tech West is the basically these hi oh hey Chloe's bad hey hey hi clothes for joining us what do you want try again let's give it another shot all right Chloe what's my schedule Oh Chloe's just teasing us now at this point Chloe needs our morning coffee well you know we saw a little bit of Chloe last year and now a little bit of Chloe this year maybe we'll see a little bit more hopefully we'll see a bit more all right let's get back to the back to the weird yes so I was coming back from the Venetian Sands Convention Center where a lot of the startups are you get a lot of the kind of weirded companies I stumbled upon what looked like a military installation within the middle of the show you were sending us a video yes and here so I've got a video here up this would live this is weird just listen to this I am here of my own that sounds so Chris me out basically this was I am here of my own will as we are longer we're all here at CES of our own free will I think she actually captured what if that like I feel ever so yeah I look at I have to admire the stage production at one point one of the audience members took flash photo soldiers grabbed and pulled him outside he came back a few minutes later with the same kind of you know disoriented look down that pink liquid and kind of dead stairs I thought the point was like maybe this was a broader statement about where technology's going and the evils of tech but then when I walked to the exit like actually we're just a beauty care company yep they were selling like facial creamers they were selling a facial mask yeah yes maybe I can partner up one of those smart mirrors I would like to show oh no no it has the facial mask has its own app oh because it's a yes everything has to have its own app whoever whoever's in marketing that thought of that is brilliant otherwise we'd never be talking about mean I basically said that the end of my story like you know what I have to give it to them I'm writing about beauty care products they told one and but I think one of the most amazing and weird and probably epic things I've seen at CES though happened at our CNET party last night for our 359 fans who know our usual guest alfred oh man yeah who wants to wants to explain what happened Cena has a party it there is no explicit and and Malcolm or was performing and he has a dance-off and asked for two people in the audience to come up on stage and have a dance-off so we have video why don't we let the video explain itself is going oh my gosh I'm screaming like crazy I mean Macklemore declared the new president CNET's yo you know he's my boss now oh no III know you were with me there on the front we were losing our mind it was like dreams come true yeah it was pretty cool it was the first time I had ever seen him breakdance he's like tops first time any of us have seen him break down yeah boy he for context he's actually a competitive breakdancer so I heard about it we even talked about during his interview but this was the first time any of us got to it yeah it was amazing this was like the best way to see it too and he was saying that like you know you know he'll hire him away so maybe someday Alfred will go out from from from us CNET to to Malcolm or dancers we'll see all right well we got to go to take a short break but when we come back I promise we're still here of her own free will and will not be so weird with some of the useful health tech they we have to talk about so stay tuned we're back on the scene at live stage with a 3:59 podcast and a special guest joining us now is Sheena Oliver from Otakon to talk about smart hearing aids so thank you for joining us absolutely my pleasure so it's not often a topic we talk about it so yeah smart hearing aids so yeah tell us about this absolutely well this is the Otakon open hearing aid which happened to be a two-time CES winner last year Award winner and it is the first world's first internet-connected hearing aid so what that means is it has unlimited abilities to connect to different types of smart devices so everything from smoke alarms baby to baby monitors doorbells you know last summer we actually streamed a live rock concert directly to open where's all across the country through their hearing aids which is pretty insane Wow Wow all right well so tell me about this year you've got a new fitness app that pairs with it allowing folks with hearing issues to I guess like get better advice get so what what was the point of the fitness app yeah well you know one of the things that we know is that healthy hearing is really integral part to who we are as individuals in our overall health and what we've seen is that hearing loss is actually a predictor of future ailments so there was a study this past July that indicated that once we get to midlife and beyond hearing loss is the number one indicator of dementia so for us this app was a great opportunity for consumers who wear hearing aids to have more autonomy be able to better manage their overall hearing and help them get to the words that path of a better hearing to really mitigate future risk of dementia in the future so could you show us the app and how it works sure well the app again connects to the hearing aid and what it is doing it by the way is just tiny I mean I don't know Bluetooth the whole battery there we go needs a recharge that's approximately five to seven days depending on how much you're using and the type of signal processing that is happening and I talked it to you about this yesterday this is you guys actually create your own processor for this purely for sound processing right absolutely absolutely and you know one of the things that happens is the hearing aid is tracking things such as overall listening environments you know tracking where the user is using the information um it's looking at the different types of environments that they're in and then that information is then combined with information that's available from other rail board devices so things like heart rate sleep patterns and based on that that information is then given to provide insights for the user so how they can improve their hearing how to protect their hearing and then just overall establishing healthier habits works sure so for example let me just pull up the screen here do I need to turn so a great example you know when people are first new to hearing aids the goal is to get them to use their hearing aids throughout the course of the day for as many hours as possible you know I have normal hearing I don't get to choose when and I want to hear when I want to turn off my hearing so the user we may set up a goal of you know eight hours per day for example right now it says zero but like so right now so this is a new user so for example they set their listening goal at eight hours a day and so what will happen is each day it's going to track the environments that they're in how often they're using their hearing aids and for example they achieve their hearing goals for a period of a week it may say you know great job have you thought about increasing your usage now to ten hours because we want them to get exposed to greater listening and more complex listening environment and beyond usage like what are you talked about how it work with your Apple watch or other fitness trackers ultimately what is some of the advice that you'd be able to give given once you crunch all that data yeah so really and we're using Microsoft analytics to crunch that data so a really perfect example of that is say someone has been wearing their hearing aids ten hours for the day they've been in very difficult listening situations like like where we are today the app may make a recommendation to them you know what you may want to consider going to bed by 9:00 o'clock tonight if you want to get up at 6 a.m. so that your brain has enough time to recover from the exertive you know the amount of energy that you exerted throughout the course of the day so that's how it's pulling in data from other sources in addition to what the hearing aids are actually tracking anything different this year being a product that is focused on health are you finding more attention or a different attitude of people coming up to you because I am serving a lot more health focused tech for specific needs focused things not just like oh I have a SmartWatch that trucks my running but like people who have a specific need are you seeing any any difference this year totally and I think that's such a great point because I think what we're seeing with consumers in general is they want to be able to be in the driver's seat they want to be able to control their health and really be a partner with their healthcare professionals and so the app is a really good example of providing users with data that they can make better decisions about how they're going to manage their rural health and hopefully make some improvements when we look down the road later a significant premium for having all these additional features as opposed to maybe a well there's actually you know there is a difference when we look at performance levels of what the device is able to do we are a hearing aid manufacturer so we actually don't set pricing for hearing aids we work with license qualified hearing care professionals across the United States and then they work directly with the patient to determine what's the best solution for them because when the listening needs and challenges that they're having and I think it's also important to note that when hearing aids are typically purchased it's done as a package meaning you're paying for the device but you're also paying for all of the diagnostic testing that's involved as well as all of the service that's required afterwards all the fitting appointments adjustments for a period of time after the aides have been purchased we also brought this connect clip what is what does this do so this is the intermediary device it pairs with the open hearing aid and it really serves three different functions because we're always looking to improve overall performance or convenience for the user so this really affects both of those the first is it could be used as I'm a remote microphone so if we're in a you know in the exhibit hall it's very noisy I can clip that on to one of you and then I'm able to hear a much better signal because of the poor okay another great example would be for hands-free phones conversations so whether it's an Android or an iPhone you can have your phone in your purse during your bag in the backseat of the car and be able to carry on a conversation and then lastly from a convenience perspective can also be a remote control meaning the user can you know increase the volume or decrease the change listening programs etc so it's just another way to add to the overall convenience of the instrument well thank you so much for coming by and showing us a few good useful tech they'll make a difference in a lot of people's lives Gary my pleasure all right that's all for the 3:59 podcast today but don't go anywhere because our day has just begun CES 2018 is the place to be all week long and we have you covered with all the must-see go-to gadgets for what your heart desires up next we got Alena cotton from Samsung and later we're gonna put case maker citta tests because we're gonna be dropping iPhone tens from a scissor lift here on the stage it's gonna be crazy stay with us you